After the Smolensk plane crash, the speed with which the disaster became - not unlike Benghazi - relegated to "yesterday's news" was stunning. An uninformed observer might conclude that what happened at Smolensk was but a minor incident, and didn't involve the deaths of Poland's president, and almost one hundred members of the military and political elite of a key U.S.-Central European ally on NATO's border with Russia.

Four years ago the Soviet-built Tupolev 154M jetliner carrying Polish President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and First Lady Maria Kaczyńska, leading a delegation of 94 Polish government officials, including high ranking civilian and military officials, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre - crashed on April 10, 2010 killing all aboard before landing at Smolensk, Russia, just east of the Belarus border.

"They were supposed to attend a second memorial service," wrote Professor Nicholas Dima at the time in his article "Katyn Tragedy Redux." "The first one had been held three days earlier, but President Kaczyński was irritated because Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had invited only the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and the Russian leader had not mentioned the Polish officers massacred by the KGB (NKVD). Consequently, Kaczynski wanted a proper ceremony held at Katyn and was on his way to attend it." There's a school of thought that believes Kaczynski took the bait and fell into Vladimir Putin's trap.